Louderblog

Diary of a Blind Madman

I seem to be a popular first call on AIM. Three people pinged me first thing after they woke. I must break this tendency somehow as talking to people in need of coffee and breakfast is not going to continue to be a good thing. I am bound to be afflicted with a grump. Besides, I become envious when I learn that they just woke up and I've been up for seven hours.

New advertising slogan "Karl. He's not just for breakfast anymore."

OK. It's been done.

I dreamed again last night, but I don't remember it. I was up a couple of times trying to get more comfortable for sleep. I crapped out in the recliner for an hour then back to the bed. I slept about four hours straight and fairly restfully. After that it was up and down several times. I do remember dreaming and even thinking "I've got to write this down" but I never got around to it and now it is gone.

I have been trying to write since early Friday evening. I've got a new SoulCatcher episode in my head that I can't get out. I just can't get it down on paper. I am very annoyed at Windows-Eyes and Jaws, the screen-readers. I can't get them to do what I want. It may be because I just haven't become familiar enough with the products or I may just not be patient enough to get what I want done. I would just like them to start reading from where I click and continue from that point. How hard can that be? Maybe I'll call Ed L. at RSB and ask him for some quick pointers. It may also be a limitation of the Demo that doesn't happen in the full version. I don't know if I'll get a full version or not. I don't know what is going on. I don't know if I'm going to be using RSB much or not. If my vision problems go away then it is a moot point. I hope I'm not going to have to live with this. Not right now. I was prepared to live with this sort of thing someday but I never expected it to happen over a weekend one day.

It is making me slightly crazy that I can't read. I have been going through a paperback a week for years. Even when not buying new books I was re-reading old stuff just for grins. Even large print books don't seem to be a solution for me. I have never seen or heard of a large print edition in a font I can read. Talking books will be OK, I guess but I don't know if it will be much the same. I hate losing things. I honest-to-god don't mind change, but I would like to have some say in it. Just having things go away is not change, it's confiscation or something. I guess I shouldn't moan. It's really not so bad.

Everyone is very solicitous and sincerely concerned about what is happening to me. I wish it helped. I am growing concerned about what is happening to me. It is not just the vision thing, though gods know that is bad enough, I am enduring a lot of other crap. Things are just not working like I think they should. I always hate that. I feel like things are way, way, way out of my control. I hate that more than I can easily describe.

All my life I've tried to have as much control over what happens to me as I can. I don't have to be in absolute, Iron-bound, masterful control as long as I have a sense that I can have an effect. I am losing that sense. I hate being helpless. That's what made my job in training so bad for me at the end. I no longer had any impact on those around me. I couldn't do things the way I wanted to, I couldn't get my boss to listen to anything I said, much less act on it. My friends were discounting my words and playing the "well, let's wait and see what he does" game. I don't know where things got lost there, but I feel it happening again.

Part of it started the other day when Dr. Jujube told me "Well I don't know if you can be satisfied." That has become a warning rattle for me of disaster about to strike.

People say that to me when I disagree with them. How come when I'm trying to convince them, I'm just wrong and when I require them to convince me I'm being unreasonable?

How come I make the same diary entry over again days apart. I just realized I've already written this once.

That's another thing that is absolutely scaring me. I never used to do things like this. I have always repeated myself, told the tales I tell until people are tired of hearing them, but it has never extended to my casual thoughts. I find myself doing simple task over because I've botched them, somehow. If I don't write things down I forget them.

The other day when Bob visited from Florida I took a pad of sticky notes (my constant companion of late) to lunch with me and make all kinds of notes about things I wanted to talk about and forgot them anyway. I never dig get Jim & Chris's phone number from him. Though I did get it later. I had to e-mail Chris at what is bound to be an old e-mail address. Or maybe not. my reasoning on such things seems to be failing me. I thought all the e-mails I had for Jim were obsolete and it turns out they're not. His e-mail at work is fine, but damned if it even occured to me that he works for the same company I do. He had the cube next to mine for what, maybe seven years? Things are not connecting right.

I don't want to go to work tomorrow. I have been obsessing about it all day today. I know by morning I'll be sick again if I don't get a grip on this, but the knowledge that I'll be sick and won't have to go is such a relief that I don't want to fix it. This is just wrong. I don't hate my job. It is basically a sucky job that I'm not good at I just hate mucking about in someone else's code for a living, but it's not exactly a living Hell or anything. It's just a living, but I don't want to do it any more.

That's the first time I've said that.

I guess that's it then. I really don't want to do this any more. Bob and many times talked about "getting out" of DP and doing something else - at one point he was going to make chocolates or run an ice cream shop. I've had lots of ideas for other employment, but none of them really concrete.

It is time to do something else. I think I have found what is wrong with me at last. My whole system is deteriorating. I am losing ground steadily to something I can't identify and I have finally identified it, I guess. My headaches have been getting worse, my level of exhaustion is at an all time high. I can't work a full day without collapsing into a near-coma and can't sleep once I get there. My diabetes has been in and out of control, my medications have been messing me up. Now my vision goes all wonky in a weekend. The universe (and my own body) is trying to tell me to change things. I need a new profession, a new location, something that will renew me instead of tearing me down.